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The
Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games
in years. Like a hybrid of classic Sierra and
LucasArts games, it tells a great fairy tale filled
with characters that you'll remember long after the
game is over. The Longest Journey is about a young
woman named April Ryan, a visual-arts student who
lives at a boarding house in a small, bohemian area
in the city of Newport called Venice. While these
locations suggest Southern California, the
geographical setting of The Longest Journey is
never stated; it's just a large city of the future.
And while The Longest Journey's setting may be the
stuff of science-fiction clichés, the game
never resorts to the typical dystopian predictions.
In fact, Newport seems very much like a modern
metropolis, only with flying cars.
April
has some problems. She's a runaway who has left
home because of her father, though the exact
reasons she left are never stated. She has a huge
art project due, and she can't seem to get started.
The guy who lives across the hall is a crude,
arrogant jackass who won't leave her alone. And
most importantly, she's being plagued by strange
dreams that seem a little too real. The game begins
in one of these dreams. April is standing high on a
cliff, overlooking a strange land. On this cliff,
she meets a dragon and a talking tree, and she is
visited by a strange, malevolent mass that sends
her careening over the edge - and back into her
bed.
When
she awakes, you begin to learn about her life. If
there's one problem with The Longest Journey, it's
that the opening is a bit slow. It's loaded with
expository dialogue about April, her friends, and
the city. While this isn't a problem in and of
itself, it seems strange that there is so much
exposition right off the bat, when you've yet to
meet any of the characters or visit the places
mentioned. These conversations would have been much
more interesting had they come a bit later in the
game, once you've actually familiarized yourself
with the places and characters you learn about.
During
the first chapters of the game, you explore April's
life. You meet her friends, you go to her school
and to her job at a local coffee house. It seems
like boring stuff, but it accomplishes an important
task - as you take part in her routine, you begin
to really care about her and her comrades. Her
friends all have the hallmark concerns of people
making the transition to adulthood - school
problems, turbulent love lives, and bad
jobs.
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